Leigong down - time for retaliation?

[HRDiagram]

Now that two Titans are down, do you think there's something else in store that we haven't seen yet?

I imagine that the Thargoids will not just be sitting ducks, passively accepting the destruction of the Titans one after the other*, and not doing anything about it.

Even the latest Galnet article ends with a similar (obvious, dare I say) thought:
"Can these victories be repeated a further six times?”

I hope we're going to see some form of twist, hopefully not just limited to higher damage resistance (aka spongier bullet sponges) or increased number of vessels defending the Titan.

Thoughts?

*Unless the Titans are in fact just an experiment to observe us, and they were sent specifically to be destroyed, to fathom our ingenuity and offensive capacity.
Or just to have a laugh.

 

[Kira Goto]

I'm sure the plot twist will occur when the Thargoids reverse the nanites on us or just become immune to them.

... it's unfortunate that we are probably just going to build a different gun out of the Taranis debris. (And Leigong's, I guess, once the caustic hellscape around it becomes a little less hellish.)

 

[Untilting]

If they just faxed the hotel the Glaives are staying at, asking them to come back early from their teambuilding retreat, that would cause me enough additional problems.

Still can't help but think there'll be something to do at HIP 22460. The angry green antiProteus machine is still waiting there...

 

[Danieros]

So in my tinfoil I don't think there will be twists. All 8 Titans will eventually go down and then at these debris maybe lies the key to finding out their home, and bringing the war to them - permit-locked regions.

This would then tie in with the unannounced new feature - which I dream of being colonization being added to the game, so the bubble will stop being static. And would make the next step of the thargoid war being us taking control and settling in the thargoid systems.

 

[Reaversword]

All of us have seen how Glaives can annoying and ruin some runs. Now imagine 4 Hydras around Titan defending it.
Sooner or later, I'm with you. Thargoids will get taugher.
FDevs will do it more and more taugh to increase the Epic grand finale. Or at least, I think they should do, you know, too much easy, not so epic.

 

[HRDiagram]

If they just faxed the hotel the Glaives are staying at, asking them to come back early from their teambuilding retreat, that would cause me enough additional problems.

Still can't help but think there'll be something to do at HIP 22460. The angry green antiProteus machine is still waiting there...

Good point about HIP 22460.
In addition, we still need to find out why people were being abducted, and if something happens with those who have been rescued.

 

[Rat Catcher]

I imagine that the Thargoids will not just be sitting ducks, passively accepting the destruction of the Titans one after the other*, and not doing anything about it.

*Unless the Titans are in fact just an experiment to observe us

They are white mice...

 

[Reggit]

Good point about HIP 22460.
In addition, we still need to find out why people were being abducted, and if something happens with those who have been rescued.

Not to mention Salvation.
He's bound to pop up somewhere!

 

[Reaversword]

OR... getting back the Glaive to interdict us when jumping to the Titan's system. I wouldn't be surprised about that for the very lasts Titans, reducing the number of players / number of ax missile weapons to attack the Titan with, in favour of some ax multi cannons to bypass Glaives.

FDevs have all the cards in their hands, they will balance the war progression as usual, and they have a lot of tricks to balance that.

Always can throw a new Titan of Titans, a big Thargoid Mega Titan giving birth more Titans from his mawl. And give us another half year to penetrate it and trying to slowly kill it from its inner sides.

 

[aRJay]

Perhaps we should mess up their plans by not attacking the weakest Titan next but attack the strongest one or even all of them at the same time.

 

[CMDR Saigon]

Bubble must burn so we flee to get beyond that God damn 0.06%!

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Even the latest Galnet article ends with a similar (obvious, dare I say) thought:
"Can these victories be repeated a further six times?”

There's a reasonably obvious question about whether it's actually practical to reduce the other Titans to the 3-6 Control systems required for a reasonably speedy victory (or alternatively hold them, for months, at around 10 Controls). At the moment the answers look like

• Hadad: yes, given a bit of time and a lot of sampling
• Oya/Thor/Raijin: probably but it'll be a long and tedious process to get there and it's quite possible no-one will want to do it a second time after Oya
• Indra/Cocijo: no, though maybe if the other six were already gone

Taranis and especially Leigong were very easy targets for various reasons. Do not extrapolate from those that it'll be a Titan every few weeks for the others! I'd be surprised and impressed if Oya fell before May (and unsurprised if it made it into June) under the current rules.

Obviously if Frontier decides that multiple months per Titan (and probably years for the last two) is too long, they have various options to speed things up.

 

[Nowski]

Taranis and especially Leigong were very easy targets for various reasons. Do not extrapolate from those that it'll be a Titan every few weeks for the others! I'd be surprised and impressed if Oya fell before May (and unsurprised if it made it into June) under the current rules.

Is it known at present what effect (if any) decommissioning spire sites has on Titanic damage resistance?

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

I'm sure the plot twist will occur when the Thargoids reverse the nanites on us or just become immune to them.

... it's unfortunate that we are probably just going to build a different gun out of the Taranis debris. (And Leigong's, I guess, once the caustic hellscape around it becomes a little less hellish.)

Maybe next is a combination harvester type of thing and we go Sojasil Machistador farming simulator. Thargoids are kinda plants? A form of lentil maybe?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Is it known at present what effect (if any) decommissioning spire sites has on Titanic damage resistance?

It certainly looks like the answer is none directly - Taranis with one recently-recaptured spire had considerably less resistance than Leigong with no spires but more controls. In most cases control reduction and spire reduction are going to happen together anyway so if there was a slight effect on that side we'd probably not notice either.

They have a very significant role in the process of reducing a Titan's control count, though - which contributes to a substantial part of the difference in difficulty between them. Because an attack on a spire can get up to 85% discount on the cost of retaking other control systems, attacks which would otherwise be impractical can succeed. But if the spire itself is in the outer 10 systems at the time, it can itself be taken out of action this way: necessary for the outer ones as they'll just get in the way later, but having that happen too early to an inner spire could delay the attack by months because attacking an inner control system without that 85% discount is extremely difficult; attacking several at once without it is beyond current capabilities.

This is why Cocijo and Indra are likely to be so difficult - their innermost spires are still quite some distance out, so all of the options look bad:
- lose the spires too early, need to wait several weeks (holding difficult territory in the meantime) for them to be recaptured by the Thargoids, hope that the recapture actually reactivates them (this seems to be unreliable) or do the final attacks at full difficulty (about seven times the spire-assisted) while also fending off their attempts to recapture.
- be extremely disciplined about keeping the spires by allowing the Thargoids to reinforce, which means only getting about 40% discount per week from them, making the final attacks about four times harder ... and it'd be very easy for "spire attacks are fun" players to accidentally break this strategy and destroy the spire.
- deliberately hold a much more distant perimeter around the Titan to avoid risking losing the last spire site, and then have to wear through the Titan's defences at 5%/week as a result.

 

[Kira Goto]

hope that the recapture actually reactivates them (this seems to be unreliable)

And even if they are recaptured, there seems to be a lack of the periphery functionality for them(at least for the ones to date… HIP 25654’s progression points have not spread to the other controls), instead acting more like a regular control system even while the spire is functional.

Whether that is how it’s meant to be or an Elite Certified Bug is yet again unclear(Indra’s recapture this week might provide some more info - providing it goes through, but it probably will).

As for their purpose, well, I guess Oya might tell if it does anything to increase a Titan’s damage resistance beyond being a control system, providing it is not taken out during the attempt to set it up for assault.

(Or their purpose is something completely different anyway and we don’t have a clue that they could be building a new Titan or mini-Titan underground.)

 

[Alec Turner]

As a counterpoint, does anyone else kinda hope there isn't yet another element/twist/hurdle/module to the Thargoid war content?

Looking back the Thargoid war has been excellent but it's not content that has been to everyone's liking. And it's not like it's hasn't been a loooong, hard (and don't get me wrong, enjoyable) slog to get where we are now, finally capable of getting to the Thargoid motherships and taking them down and I almost kinda hope this is it.

a) I'm so sooo bored of the villain getting back up again at the end of a film and much prefer it when the hero finally wins ... and the villain doesn't have yet another move up their sleeve and STAYS DEAD.
b) I just want Frontier to do something else now. It HAS been great ... but jeez, enough already! (maybe?)

 

[Ian Doncaster]

And even if they are recaptured, there seems to be a lack of the periphery functionality for them(at least for the ones to date… HIP 25654’s progression points have not spread to the other controls), instead acting more like a regular control system even while the spire is functional.

HIP 25654 at Taranis could be argued to be intentional - there isn't a coordinating Titan to redeploy forces from other control systems to the spire.

Col 285 Sector OG-E b12-1 at Thor and most of Indra's outer spires are older recaptures which still have a Titan ... and there, the result doesn't seem good: the recaptured spires at Indra all have local progress despite being well inward of the periphery.

So it's likely that capturing a Spire permanently makes it unusable for future discounts (and therefore, had U18 come out even a couple of weeks later, Taranis might have been essentially invincible). As you say, who knows if that's a bug or a feature.

 

[Leadfoot]

I imagine that the Thargoids will not just be sitting ducks, passively accepting the destruction of the Titans one after the other*, and not doing anything about it.

After two of them have been blown up, I'm certain someone has walked over to the queen and mentioned "We've analyze their attack, and there does appear to be a danger. Shall I have your shuttle standing by?"

I don't believe we have ever known the thargoids to just sit on their hands, or claws, or whatever they have, observing two of their biggest craft get blowed up real good by the apes.

An important point to note, is that FD (the gods of the Galaxy) have hinted that they wanted this war to end by the end of the calendar year so that the next narrative can move on. Based on that, I think that they may tweak things a little bit to give us more of a challenge but I don't think they're going to screw up anything that we're doing right now.

Perhaps we should mess up their plans by not attacking the weakest Titan next but attack the strongest one or even all of them at the same time.

Considering that would be out of the normal sequence, I like that idea.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

An important point to note, is that FD (the gods of the Galaxy) have hinted that they wanted this war to end by the end of the calendar year so that the next narrative can move on. Based on that, I think that they may tweak things a little bit to give us more of a challenge but I don't think they're going to screw up anything that we're doing right now.

Did you mean "less of a challenge" there? I can't see any plausible way in which all eight Titans are done by December 31st under the current rules and balancing.

Considering that would be out of the normal sequence, I like that idea.

Oya is already considerably tougher than Hadad, and probably at least a little trickier than Thor (though with slightly better spire positioning). If it wasn't for the massive work already put into Oya by local player groups to keep it as small as it is, it wouldn't be the obvious next choice.

(Attacking all six remaining ones at once would probably just lead to a stalemate somewhere around the 20 LY line and most of them still on Maximum DR)